ather disgusted,
for so many curious eyes fixed upon the beauty of his sweetheart
annoyed him. The stares seemed to him robbery and the girl's smiles
faithlessness.

Juanito saw her and his hump increased when he spoke to her. Paulita
replied negligently, while Dona Victorina called to him, for Juanito
was her favorite, she preferring him to Isagani.

"What a girl, what a girl!" muttered the entranced Padre Camorra.

"Come, Padre, pinch yourself and let me alone," said Ben-Zayb
fretfully.

"What a girl, what a girl!" repeated the friar. "And she has for a
sweetheart a pupil of mine, the boy I had the quarrel with."

"Just my luck that she's not of my town," he added, after turning
his head several times to follow her with his looks. He was even
tempted to leave his companions to follow the girl, and Ben-Zayb had
difficulty in dissuading him. Paulita's beautiful figure moved on,
her graceful little head nodding with inborn coquetry.

Our promenaders kept on their way, not without sighs on the part
of the friar-artilleryman, until they reached a booth surrounded by
sightseers, who quickly made way for them. It was a shop of little
wooden figures, of local manufacture, representing in all shapes and
sizes the costumes, races, and occupations of the country: Indians,
Spaniards, Chinese, mestizos, friars, clergymen, government clerks,
gobernadorcillos, students, soldiers, and so on.

Whether the artists had more affection for the priests, the folds
of whose habits were better suited to their esthetic purposes, or
whether the friars, holding such an important place in Philippine life,
engaged the attention of the sculptor more, the fact was that, for one
cause or another, images of them abounded, well-turned and finished,
representing them in the sublimest moments of their lives--the opposite
of what is done in Europe, where they are pictured as sleeping on
casks of wine, playing cards, emptying tankards, rousing themselves
to gaiety, or patting the cheeks of a buxom girl. No, the friars
of the Philippines were different: elegant, handsome, well-dressed,
their tonsures neatly shaven, their features symmetrical and serene,
their gaze meditative, their expression saintly, somewhat rosy-cheeked,
cane in hand and patent-leather shoes on their feet, inviting adoration
and a place in a glass case. Instead of the symbols of gluttony and
incontinence of their brethren in Europe, those of Manila carried the
book, the crucifix